Beat Credit Crunch – Sell Your Home!

Bet you never thought you would hear that advice about beating the credit crunch from us eh?

I was moodling around Google Trends today, looking at the interesting key words and phrases thrown up around the phrase “credit crunch” and I came across something – by a “So-Called EXPERT” – that absolutely incensed me. Have a read below and then carry on to hear my thoughts on the subject……!!

(This article is was featured on the Money Week website and was taken from “Merryn Somerset Webb’s free weekly personal finance email, Money Sense)

Merryn says: We’ve heard that 41% of people paid for some part of Christmas on their credit cards; that more people than ever before will go bankrupt this year; that repossessions are likely to keep rising all year; that mortgage rates are going to keep going up even as base rates fall; and that the average person only has enough cash to last 12 short days should they leave their jobs.

Hot on the heels of this has come a plethora of articles telling us what to do about it. Anyone who doesn’t know how to consolidate their loans, find an interest free credit card, cut their utility payments, create a budget spreadsheet (you can download one here) and get a cheaper mortgage by now clearly hasn’t been listening to the personal finance experts properly or spending enough time on the Moneyweek website.

But reading – and writing – all these money makeover articles this month (see also: How to give yourself a money makeover), I’ve been beginning to wonder if for many people the best way to survive the credit crunch and free up a lot of cash in a hurry might be to stop bothering with financial micro managing, dump their mortgages altogether and rent somewhere to live instead.

Why it makes sense to rent, not buy.

Selling to rent (STR as it is now known) has made some financial sense for some years now in cash flow terms – i.e. rents have been generally cheaper than mortgage payments on most properties. But now that the chances of making a capital gain on owning a house (the only reason to have bought over the last 3 years) look pretty low, it seems to make more sense than ever.

READ MORE HERE >>> (If you can bear to…..)

Right then, deep breaths all round!

Any Money Gym client will be spinning on their mouses (mice? meece?) right along with me because we all know something that the majority of the population does not seem to know….or believe……or worse……they seem to forget in times of TEMPORARY crisis like these….

Property doubles in value every 7-10 years in the UK on average, and it’s quicker in the South East. Even taking dips in growth (because that is what this is, a dip in growth).

The GOVERNMENT for heaven’s sake, have recently upgraded their estimates of ANNUAL GROWTH of property in the UK, for the next ten years, from 5.5% per annum to 8.5% per annum. And that’s the whole of the UK. The South-East historically has risen at around 14% over the last 50-60 years.

So, when your average family home is worth around £240,000, and the family who lives in it is set to make another £240,000 over the next ten years, without having to work for it, or even pay tax on it……..

HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY MAKE SENSE TO SELL IT?

How else could they make that money? That’s £24,000 a year…..more than many people make per annum in their JOBS.

Sorry, I’m shouting I know, but I’m bloody furious!! If I had my way, old Merryn would be taken outside and shot at dawn. With a paintball gun obviously, but publically and with dayglo paint balls that HURT a bit. While wearing a sign that says “STUPID ALERT: DON’t BELIEVE A WORD I SAY”

Even if this fictitious family have to borrow some money to keep up the mortgage payments or GOD FORBID, GET A SECOND OR THIRD JOB to keep up with their payments, surely that’s got to be worth doing?

My business partner Judith Morgan gave up two properties in London in the early 90’s because it was that, or let her business go down the tubes. She subsequently sold the business for well over six figures, but now she says she should have kept the properties, and DONE EVERYTHING in her power to do so, because they would be worth MILLIONS to her now. And have taken a lot less work!!

Read Judith’s story here – and she’s an accountant, so she knows.

Unlike Merryn somerset Webb, MoneyWeek editor who doesn’t know, to the point of being dangerous.

Her biography reads thusly:

Merryn was a senior scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she gained a first class degree in History & Economics. She then became a Daiwa scholar and spent a year studying Japanese at London University. In 1992 Merryn moved to Japan to continue her Japanese studies and to produce business programmes for NHK, Japan’s public TV station. In 1993 she became an institutional broker for SBC Warburg, where she stayed for 5 years. Returning to the UK in 1998, Merryn became a financial writer for The Week. Two years later, in 2000, MoneyWeek was launched and Merryn took the job of editor.

She writes a FREE weekly personal finance email called Money Sense and has recently published a book on personal finance for women, Love is Not Enough: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Making (and Keeping) Money (HarperPress, 2007).

Note: Nowhere does it say she’s a professional property investor. Oooooh, were those all JOBS she has had? Methinks they are. High paid jobs, but jobs nonetheless.

Money Gym’ers……….avoid this woman like the plague! In her articles credits she lists one article called “Your house is not your pension” – I have read it and I tell you now, you should not.

In the third paragraph, she says “But if your house isn’t your pension, what is? Personally, I think it is a nice savings account backed up by a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) into which you put a variety of low cost exchange traded funds which you then hold for 20 years”.

Hahahahahhahahahahahahh – the sound of hysterical yet still FURIOUS laughter echoes round Money Gym Towers, startling the seagulls and the children of the beach. All very well if you have excess income over expenditure and you have 20 years till you want to retire. Which most people – most women – don’t!

God almighty, comment by clicking the link below, will you Money Gym’ers?

Let me know I’m not alone in my fight to save the ordinary people – particularly women – of the UK from being trapped in their “Just Over Broke’s” and total financial poverty in old age?

£1k For A Piece Of Caribbean Paradise?

Judith Morgan says: “Only £1,000 down for your own freehold little bit of Paradise in the Caribbean? Can this really be true? Or is it simply “Too Good To Be True”?

I have always wanted a life in the sun, so when one of our own ex-clients on the 2007 Money Gym Gold Express programme contacted me earlier in the year, I couldn’t wait to hear about the opportunity she presented.

At the time, I had challenges of my own – I was right in the middle of moving house in the same week as Janet Swift took me to a 3-day Alan Forrest Smith event and then I hurtled up to Manchester to find out all about Cartel, about which more later.

And to be honest with you, and I don’t think Victoria would mind my sharing this with you, when she brought it around to me, she hadn’t got her own head round the offering yet and so I simply didn’t understand it either and with all that busyness on my hands, I just parked it – a bit further down the To Do List! But I do remember calling Nicola and saying we must tell our clients about this. Nicola said “no, not now, let’s wait until someone we know and trust has invested their own money in it first” or word to that effect.

But Money Gym clients are not fools and so Victoria hedged her bets and she also showed it to Marcus de Maria AND Maria Davies. These days, Maria writes a regular column for “A Place in the Sun” magazine and so if Victoria could get past Maria’s defences, that would be a great result.

As Maria tells the story, Victoria badgered and badgered and badgered until Maria caved in and looked at the details and followed up on the opportunity in a way which I simply had not had time for.

And what did she discover? Maria discovered something so good she invested herself and she has now given up most, if not all, of her other speaking engagements just to present for this company. She is concentrating on them pretty much full-time and for the same reasons, it doesn’t just look too good to be true – it is true! And we want our clients to get a piece of that action!

With Maria’s “heads up” we have now all discovered something which, as I say, many will think too good to be true and indeed that may prove to be thei greatest marketing challenge!

So, what do they offer then, and how can you get your own freehold bit of Paradise in the Caribbean for only £1,000 down?

This company is a UK based developer, owned and run by one family, most of whom work in the business. Their Head Office is in Essex and I have been down there twice, once on my own to learn from a BBC geologist and oceanographer all about why their developments are no more likely to be hit by a hurricane than the south coast of England (!) and once with a carload of lovely Money Gym ladies.

We went to find out more, we went to grill the sales guy whose name, appropriately, is Sunny. We grilled the poor boy (and ticked him off about the state of the Ladies Loo to boot) for way more than two hours and he had the answers to all of our questions, literally at his fingertips. Sunny, rather worryingly (but affectionately I feel) now calls me “Trouble”.

Since then I have been once more to hang out in Essex. I have been to their Directors’ Box at the glamorous all-new Wembley Stadium where I met Katharine. Katharine is a Cambridge graduate who has worked for this company since she was 23; she’s now 26 and she is, quite frankly, the most brilliant presenter I have ever heard in all my years in the Money Gym.

There’s no fluff, she embodies the word succinct, thank heavens and she’s intelligent, intelligent, intelligent and posh (her hobby, nay passion, is Polo). And Katharine has created a lot of the business excellence which this company now display. Again, when answering questions, she quite easily and quickly put her hands on the answer to everything. Katharine is my new best friend in the Wonderful World of Wealth Creation.

God knows how or where the CEO recruited Katharine (she was head-hunted apparently) but he’s no fool. Together they are a brilliant business combination to my mind.

Sunny’s Mum works for the company. Katharine’s brother is her PA. It truly is a family business. Does that make it a better business? Not necessarily, but apart from Cartel, I haven’t found a business with greater or more infectious energy for a very long time. Victoria even took her singing sister into this company to work too.

So, let’s cut to the chase. Who are they and what’s in it for you?

A little piece of Paradise as I already said on terms which are literally too good to be true…..
Read more..

Marcus De Maria Taken By Surprise

When we arrived at Tim Brocklehurst’s Freedom Class last week, at 8am on a Saturday morning, imagine my surprise when we bumped into Marcus De Maria from Investment Mastery and his team!

Credit Repair With Rent2Own

For people who have a bad credit the rent to own home facility provides solace in the fact that they can repair their bad credit while in the process of buying the house. The rent to own home policy is a good one and helps the buyers purchase a house by renting it first.

Some people choose the option of a rent to own home in order to check out the neighborhood, before committing to the property. But there are other cash strapped people with bad credit for whom the rent to own home is the only way to buy their dream homes, because of the fact that they are unable to get home loans because of their bad credit.

There are a huge number of home owners who have found the home of their choice by the process of rent to own. Leasing the house before practically owning it is fast becoming the preferred choice of transaction among most people.

Suppose you have a bad credit history, then it is really hard to get finance from the banks to buy a house, under such a scenario the only option left is to go through the process of rent to own. In the process of rent to own contrary to the outright sales the buyer does not need to make a huge down payment at first, in fact the down payments are very small indeed. This makes it easier on the pocket for the first time investors as well, and the other fact that bout fifty percent of the rent paid by the prospective buyer is accredited to the rent credit account lowers the price of the house substantially.

People who have bad credit can always choose a leasing option where they have a longer option period , making it easier for them to repair their credit while being in the process of buying the house.

Courtesy :  Century 21 /HT Brown Realty

The good news is that Rent To Own (Rent2Own) is becoming more common in the UK, with a network of property investors who offer properties under this scheme growing all the time. 

Rick Otton, who pioneered the system in the USA and then Australia, mentored David Lee in the UK, and having got the process right over the last three years, David and Rick are now rolling out a tuition programme which is very exciting, and just right for the current market conditions.  First time buyers and novice property investors are struggling to get mortgages, and the Rent To Own / House For A Pound techniques are allowing investors to turn negative cashflow properties into positive cashflow, and allowing first time buyers and aspiring property investors with no deposit and no credit rating to find out how to buy a property (or several) for next to nothing.  This is not “no money down” but damn close to it!

The Money Gym sees this as a perfect complement to long term investing, and so we will be presenting the concept at our next Property workshop on 14th June.  Find out more here http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/mgpresents/property2.htm

Property Crash? Andy Shaw comments…

PASSIVE INVESTMENT UPDATE:

This post is an old one obviously but it gets a lot of traffic from the search engines.  The news that Passive Investments have gone into liquidation is shocking for everyone.  Read The Latest Money Gym Statement Here>>>>

The Post Previously Read:

I knew Andy Shaw wouldn’t be able to resist on the dreadful headlines about the property market for long, and I was not disappointed.  If you can’t believe a man who, with his partner Greg, has built up a property portfolio worth over £30 million, then who can you believe eh?  Andy says….

“I was doing some research the other day for our business Passive, and I was asked to find some research from a recognised professional that backed up my argument about the fact that the country is not over geared despite what the media says.

Well here’s quite a good one that I thought you’d like too -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/12/housingmarket.houseprices

Martin Ellis is the chief economist of Halifax and he is stating that the property market is now worth £4 trillion, which is three times the UK’s annual output. And it shows household debt at what is commonly thought to be a staggering £1.3 trillion.

Now I have been trying to say that for years but never got round to looking for the figures to back up what I was saying. So, really basically, if you look at the country as just a person, it is worth £4 trillion, and has £1.3 Trillion of debt

So our mortgage and household debt, cars, loans, credit cards, the lot, gears us as a whole to 33% of our equity.

Can you tell me what loan to value the banks consider virtually zero risk lending?

Well different banks view it in different ways. Allied Irish view 70% as virtually zero risk, while Nationwide view 65% as virtually zero risk. Some banks go down to as low as 50% before they view it as virtually zero risk. But we as a population are at 33%, which is well below the risk criteria of even the most conservative of banks.

What does this say to you about the way the media and the government view the extraordinary high levels of consumer debt? It says to me: scaremongering. ……

Read more at Andy’s site >>>>

Discover How Two Men Turned £10k On A Credit Card Into £37 million Plus, In The UK, In Just A Few Years….
	Our mate, Andy Shaw. Property Genius & Thoroughly Good Bloke!
CLICK HERE NOW - DON’T MISS OUT !!

Become A Millionaire – Part 6

Wealth Expert & founder of The Money Gym, Nicola Cairncross shares the sixth and final instalment of the video series on how to become a millionaire via building a business, investing in property, making money online and the stockmarket.

« Previous Page